Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in EuropeWillis, Nathaniel Parker
General
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
Europe -- Description and travel
The mist lifted a little from the lake after dinner, and we saw the
two islands said by Pliny to have floated, in his time. They look like
the tops of green hills rising from the water.
It is a beautiful country again as you approach Montefiascone. The
scenery is finely broken up with glens formed by columns of basalt,
giving it a look of great wildness. Montefiascone is built on the
river of one of these ravines. We stopped here long enough to get a
bottle of the wine for which the place is famous, drinking it to the
memory of the "German prelate," who, as Madame Stark relates, "stopped
here on his journey to Rome, and died of drinking it to excess." It
has degenerated, probably, since his time, or we chanced upon a bad
bottle.
The walls of _Viterbo_ are flanked with towers, and have a noble
appearance from the hill-side on which the town stands. We arrived too
late to see anything of the place. As we were taking coffee at the
_café_ the next morning, a half hour before daylight, we heard music
in the street, and looking out at the door, we saw a long procession
of young girls, dressed with flowers in their hair, and each playing a
kind of cymbal, and half dancing as she went along. Three or four at
the head of the procession sung a kind of verse, and the rest joined
in a short merry chorus at intervals. It was more like a train of
Corybantes than anything I had seen. We inquired the object of it, and
were told it was a procession _to the vintage_. They were going out to
pluck the last grapes, and it was the custom to make it a festa. It
was a striking scene in the otherwise perfect darkness of the streets,
the torch-bearers at the sides waving their flambeaux regularly over
their heads, and shouting with the rest in chorus. The measure was
quick, and the step very fast. They were gone in an instant. The whole
thing was poetical, and in keeping, for Italy. I have never seen it
elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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